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Quotes about Eric Liddellwhilst imprisoned at invading Japanese internment camp where he died aged 43 in 1941.

“Often in an evening I would see him bent over a chessboard or a model boat, or directing some sort of square dance – absorbed, weary and interested, pouring all of himself into this effort to capture the imagination of these penned-up youths. He was overflowing with good humour and love for life, and with enthusiasm and charm. It is rare indeed that a person has the good fortune to meet a saint, but he came as close to it as anyone I have ever known.”

His last words were “It’s complete surrender”, in reference to how he had given his life to his God

Test cricket is not a three-hour Bollywood epic, or an ’80s-style four-hour Springsteen concert, or even a day at the beach. Test cricket junkies are more than just quantifiable “consumers” of cricket; they are emotional participants in an unscripted drama that becomes days of their lives.

The title, Fire in Babylon, promised much. But do you really think that Sir Isaac Vivian Alexander Richards (KNH, OBE) and Cuthbert Gordon Greenidge (MBE) were in any way pioneering post-colonial heroes?

…batsmen before them had been the best in the world in their time. But those players played before the Age of Television, before the Age of Packer, before the age of handsome contracts in County Cricket.

I kept thinking back to Sobers. I wonder what he would say about Fire in Babylon.

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“You might not like it, but it is the way of business. And if business has imposed its values on IPL, that’s only because it was invited, even entreated, to do so, in order that the maximum sums be extracted from the sale of franchises. Face it: the money changers aren’t in the temple, they were sold the keys to the temple; and since then they have changed the locks.”